


you weren’t mine to lose

by IneffableDoll



Series: Ineffable Confessions of Love [26]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 5+1 Things, 6000 Years of Love (Good Omens), Alcohol, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Asexual Aziraphale (Good Omens), Asexual Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Fluff, Happy Ending, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Love Confessions, Other, POV Alternating, Pining, Post-Scene: The Ritz (Good Omens), Queerplatonic Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Queerplatonic Relationships, Some Humor, The Night At Crowley's Flat (Good Omens), accidental love confession: the fic, because love is so varied and beautiful my dear friends, but it's 7, can also probably be read aro!, lowkey rejected confessions but not really, of which there be many in these here parts, slight canon divergence for the feeeeeeeeeels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 00:35:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29269614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IneffableDoll/pseuds/IneffableDoll
Summary: 6000 years is a long time to keep a secret. Too long, in fact, to really manage it.ORSeven times, Crowley or Aziraphale accidentally make their feelings known, but are forced to hide or deny it. And one time, finally, they don’t have to.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Ineffable Confessions of Love [26]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1714558
Comments: 30
Kudos: 88
Collections: Aspec-friendly Good Omens





	you weren’t mine to lose

**Author's Note:**

> In hindsight, this may have been inspired by [everything just stops](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19296064) by witching, and, as a result, the title is from our gal Taylor Swift’s “august.” This is another of those fics I started before Painstakingly Drafted took over everything and made me forget all my WIPs. So, this fic has been gathering dust for five months, whoops. Finally wrote the remaining 80% of it this week, hope you like what came of it!  
> TW: canon-typical drinking, canon-compliant referral to suicide via holy water (which, of course, does not occur) and canon-compliant assumed major character death (again, doesn’t occur).

I.

“All ‘m sayin’,” Crowley slurred, shaking a finger in Aziraphale’s face, “‘s that if a ghost popped up and said, ‘I’m your dad, murder your uncle!’ I’d probably question it a lil’ bit more.”

“Tha’s the entire point, m’ dear,” Aziraphale countered. “He’s – he’s...troubled.”

The angel and demon were sitting together in the corner of a tavern that had steadily grown busier over the past two – three? Four? – hours since they’d come here to continue their discussion of _Hamlet_. They had also, as it so happened, gotten significantly more drunk than was healthy, had they been anything other than the supernatural entities they were. As it was, both assumed they couldn’t get alcohol poisoning, and so, they did not.

They were still drunk as hell, though.

Aziraphale reached for his tankard and was displeased to find it empty.

“Troubled?” Crowley scoffed. “Y’ know who’s troubled? Prolly the f’kin’...the girl, getting bossed around by her arsehat father and her arsehat brother ‘n’ then havin’ t’ deal wi’ an arsehat prince…”

Aziraphale blinked up at his companion. “Who?”

“The - the girl! Off...opal...O-feel-a.”

“Mmm.” He nodded sagely. “O-feel-a di’n’ deserve tha’…oh, botheration,” he murmured as a gesturing hand knocked his empty tankard onto the ground. He didn’t feel up to the herculean task of retrieving it.

Crowley downed the last of his alcohol, a bit dribbling down his chin. Slamming it down and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he scowled. “Wassat?”

“Hmm?”

“Wha’ you said. Why are you…” He waved his hand, eyelids half-drooped. “Bothered?” 

“Oh!” Aziraphale shook his head. “Nothing.”

“Come ooooon,” Crowley moaned. “Y’ can tell me!”

He shook his head harder, feeling for some reason that he didn’t want to admit he’d knocked his tankard off, even though it was lying right there on the floor.

“Aaaangel,” he groaned petulantly, leaning across the table to drunkenly pat Aziraphale’s hand. He offered a lopsided grin. “Y’ can trust me.”

Aziraphale snorted. “Trust a demon?”

“A demon who _loves you,”_ Crowley clarified, shaking his finger again.

Aziraphale’s mouth fell open.

Crowley blinked a few times, still smiling, as his alcohol-inhibited brain caught up with his words. The smile slid off slowly, like watching the dying embers of a flame turn to greyed ash. He looked horrified, and terrified.

Aziraphale found that he was much, much more sober than he was a moment ago. He cleared his throat, which didn’t help. “Erm…”

Crowley drew his hands away as though electrified, every line of him tense, the alcohol banished from his bloodstream. “Bless,” he said with feeling. “Uh, angel, I didn’t – I never – you know I don’t, um, that was just a…a joke?”

“A…joke.” 

Crowley folded his arms and nodded once.

“Of – of course.” It was so clearly a lie, but Aziraphale had enough mercy not to point it out. Nothing good could come of that. “You’re a demon. Demons don’t love.” He very specifically did not say “can’t.”

Crowley looked genuinely relieved at the old barb, one that had long since lost its weight and intent. He nodded vigorously. “Exactly. Imagine, me, loving anything. Absurd.” His attempt at a smirk was painful to look at.

Aziraphale smiled back, tight. “Absurd.”

There was an awkward silence before Crowley got up and excused himself, practically fleeing from the tavern and still looking utterly horrified with himself.

Aziraphale got drunk again. It wasn’t nearly as much fun alone.

It wasn’t like he didn’t already know that Crowley had…untoward feelings for him. And the demon had always been particularly affectionate, with gifts and small platonic touches. Speaking of _Hamlet,_ after all! Look what he did with it, all for Aziraphale! All that said, it was one thing to suspect and even to know, and another to have to hear it. What if – what if someone _heard,_ or found out? No, they – er, Crowley, couldn’t be saying these things.

It was only at the bottom of the sixth tankard of something revolting and very strong that Aziraphale admitted to himself that he wished he lived in a world where he could have said it back.

II.

“I don’t get it,” Crowley said.

“There’s not much to get, Crowley. It’s food. It’s tasty.”

“Yes, okay, but this is like…it’s like a tortilla but wrong.” Crowley stabbed at his savoury crepe with the barbs of his fork, distrustful of the mushrooms and greens wrapped in a thin, flavourless…thingy. “It’s a pathetic pancake is what it is.”

Aziraphale sniffed, looking mildly affronted. “You just lack an appreciation for the finer things.”

Crowley grinned at him and pushed the plate across the little wire table where they sat together in a small creperie, beheading avoided and lunch a go. “I trust you to cover that for me so I may continue my life of exclusively guilty pleasures.”

“Of course, a demon would fail to have the proper refinement for such things,” Aziraphale said with his nose in the air, even as his free hand pulled the plate closer.

Crowley shrugged. “You call it refinement; I call it snobbery, angel.”

Aziraphale looked like he was resisting the urge to roll his eyes – and oh, how Crowley wished he wouldn’t resist, a bitchy Aziraphale was a guilty pleasure of its own. Pointedly looking away, the angel took a bite of his strawberry crepe and gave a long, delighted moan, closing his eyes and chewing slowly in appreciation and bliss.

Crowley stared unabashedly from behind the safety of his tinted shades at the angel’s infectious, shameless joy. He waited just until Aziraphale’s eyes began to open, then looked away so the angel would never know he’d been staring.

“So,” Crowley said. “How goes the shop you’re opening? Getting all the…books together, and such?”

The edges of Aziraphale’s eyes crinkled in delight as he went into a long diatribe explaining how he’d gathered his stashes of manuscripts and scrolls and books from his various places, and further been seeking out pieces he’s had an eye on but no place to store. He asked Crowley’s opinion on the colours for the walls and then bulldozed over whatever Crowley replied with. Crowley watched and listened, enraptured, nodding along in all the right places. He might’ve teased, maybe even should’ve to keep up the expected rapport, but he knew how much it meant to the angel, to have a place like this of his own.

Still, he wouldn’t be him if he didn’t tease just a touch. When Aziraphale stopped for a bite, Crowley carefully slid his smile into a small smirk and commented, “Sounds like more of a library, angel. Is there room to breathe, or is it all paper and leather?”

Aziraphale obligingly rolled his eyes as he chewed, and Crowley’s smirk turned back into a smile. “I assure you, my dear Crowley, that there is plenty of space for other duties.” A spark of excitement flared in him as he grinned. “I’ve even had installed a _darling_ little cellar just beneath the shop, so we can keep our favourites at hand rather than always hoping for or” – he waved a hand in the air – “miracling what we want.”

Eyes wide behind the spectacles, Crowley’s stomach swooped at the words _we_ and _our._ Like…like it was a place where Crowley was _welcome._ Like he had a say in something that Aziraphale would keep on hand. It was a good feeling, and it made him nauseous. “Well, that’s convenient,” he managed. “I look forward to pilfering your stocks, then.”

Aziraphale frowned at him, though it was largely for show. “None of that, my dear. Really, have some propriety! All I’m saying is that the bookshop should be a suitable place to contact me when absolutely necessary for – for business.”

Crowley snorted. “Right, ‘cause people go around stocking their business partner’s favourite wine and asking their opinion on wall paint.”

“Well. I.” Aziraphale looked slightly panicked. He always did, if Crowley dared to infer that the angel gave a twit about the demon’s existence. It was a harsh view of it, sure, but Crowley couldn’t help it sometimes. His bitterness wasn’t aimed at Aziraphale – it had a higher trajectory.

“Course,” Crowley continued, oh-so-nonchalantly, “could be that you’re just trying to tempt me into taking your more obnoxious blessings, so you’ll have more time to kiss book spines or whatever you do in your free time.”

That did the trick. “Really, Crowley,” Aziraphale huffed. “You’re ridiculous.”

Crowley grinned. “But I’m _your_ ridiculous.”

He expected a snap back of _that doesn’t even make any sense, Crowley, why must you bastardize every language you learn,_ but instead, Aziraphale just stared at him, slightly pink.

Ah. Bless his stupid, infernal mouth to Heaven.

Crowley opened aforementioned traitorous mouth, closed it. He gave a fake cough. “Business partner,” he added pathetically, thinking _friend_. “I’m your ridiculous _business partner.”_

Aziraphale relaxed marginally, though the remainder of the meal passed in a slightly jilted, awkward way. They finished their food ( _Aziraphale_ finished his food, that is), Crowley paid, and the two parted ways. Aziraphale carefully “foul fiend”ed him before his departure.

Crowley cursed his twice-damned heart for being so utterly hopeless, and so utterly lost.

III.

Aziraphale’s world was falling out from under him.

He couldn’t comprehend those two words, this slip of paper produced by the shadow at his side (where he belonged). Crowley was asking for Aziraphale to – to what? Willingly provide him with the means of his eternal extinction? Why? Why did he want it? How could he possibly ask Aziraphale to let it happen – to _make_ it happen?

“Why not?”

“No, Crowley,” Aziraphale replied. If his voice was cold and sharp, it was only to keep it from wobbling as it threatened to. As his hand did. “It would – it would destroy you. Forever. _Completely.”_

“That’s not what I want it for,” Crowley replied tersely. “It’s just…insurance.”

“Absolutely not!” Aziraphale burst, shoulders shaking. “Do you know how much trouble I’d get into if – do you know how much I would…I love you too much to let you get hurt!”

It was silent for a long moment.

“Ang-“

“No.” Aziraphale snapped, and the surrounding humans who’d overheard the outburst abruptly forgot the last thirty seconds. He tossed the crumbled scrap of paper into the lake and turned away, heart and eyes burning. “There is no point in discussing this further, Crowley.”

“Azira-“ A hand landed on Aziraphale’s shoulder, which he shrugged off.

“I expect you shan’t follow me, and I shan’t see you for some time,” Aziraphale spat out. “There will be no – no _fraternizing_ until you’ve given up this fool idea.” He had to be angry. He had to sound angry, or the tears might spill out.

Crowley sounded closer when he spoke. And it was soft, so soft. Demons shouldn’t be soft. “Angel, I…”

“I know.” He did. “Not now.” Not ever.

Aziraphale’s shadow disappeared, and the world didn’t fall. But it shuddered, and Aziraphale escaped to the confines of his bookshop, more afraid than he’d ever felt.

He feared too many things to name.

IV.

Crowley shifted in his seat in the Bentley. The blackout of night was dark around them, echoes of bombs in their ears. Aziraphale settled into the seat to his left and shut the door with a hesitant _click_ before giving him a wary side eye.

“Bookshop, then?” Crowley asked cheerily, as though anything about this was normal. Crowley so desperately wished it was normal and _could_ have been normal, a return to the days when Crowley would swoop in for a gallant rescue, and Aziraphale would look at him like _that,_ and they’d just be…the way they were, together, as much as they could.

Not this. Not decades of silence. Not the palpable distrust emanating from both their cores, hidden beneath the fading adrenaline of near-discorporation and burning feet. Words Aziraphale had dared to speak aloud at their last meeting ran in circles around Crowley’s brain, as they had for nigh a century.

“Yes, please,” Aziraphale replied, facing forward with his hands in his lap. Crowley pushed on the pedal, eliciting a startled squeak as Aziraphale grasped at the edge of the seat.

“Not ridden in cars much, I’m guessing?” Crowley ventured carefully with a small, helpless grin.

Aziraphale scowled at him and said in a too-high voice, “Not one so _infernally propelled,_ Crowley! You’re going to – stay on the _road_!”

“Relax, angel, she knows what to do!”

By the time they pulled up in front of the bookshop, a move that felt as foreign as it did familiar, they had settled into a comfortable bout of bickering that made the last eighty years of distance seem like nothing but a dream. They clearly weren’t going to talk about it (and maybe they should), but all Crowley cared about was how normal it felt to have his companion beside him.

As soon as the car rolled to a stop, Aziraphale gave him a strong glare. “I hope you don’t expect me to get into this – this machine again, with you driving about like that.”

Crowley felt an undemonic pang of guilt at the angel’s discomfort, and a very demonic pang of amusement for much the same reason, and reached over to pry Aziraphale’s fingers off the seat edge. “Hmm. Not even if I was to, say, treat you to Wilton’s? Not far from here, just off Piccadilly.” He paused and smirked. “They do oysters.”

Something in Aziraphale’s eyes softened. Perhaps the reference to a long-ago memory, perhaps the offer itself. This was Crowley, admitting that he wanted to pick back up where they left off. That he was willing to move past it, if Aziraphale would, too.

He sniffed and adjusted his lapels and bowtie and waistcoat, eyes steady out the windshield. “You shan’t be bribing me with seafood, Crowley.”

“I’ll drive slower, if you like.”

“Will you?”

Crowley grinned toothily and shrugged. “Wha’d’you think?”

Aziraphale sighed, half exasperated and half wistful. “I _do_ miss oysters.”

“I missed _you,”_ Crowley said without thinking. He made a face, feeling the heat in his cheeks rising, and turned away to look very forcefully at anything other than Aziraphale. He wanted to laugh it off, this casual admission they weren’t supposed to make. He remembered how he had, before, so many times. Countless times. Pretended (poorly) that it was a joke or mistake or bloody reference to a play. He’d agonize afterward, but he’d survive it, and he’d survive Aziraphale pretending to believe him.

Crowley knew he should backtrack. Pretend otherwise and make his excuses. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. The denials were the building bile in his throat, the gag of a lie it shredded him to repeat and repeat until the truth was tarnished and bent out of shape in his pocket. He only realized he still had his hand wrapped around Aziraphale’s fingers when the angel squeezed them slightly and let go.

“After the war is done,” Aziraphale said in a measured tone.

Crowley looked at him, eyes wide. “What?”

Aziraphale opened the car door and stepped out. “After the war, my dear.”

The demon swallowed. “After the war,” he echoed.

The door shut, and Crowley watched the angel, bag in hand, approach the bookshop, unlock the front, and step inside without looking back. He suddenly remembered the lingering burn on his soles and made for the place where he was boarding. Maybe he should get himself a slightly more permanent London residence nearby. Not too close, of course. But. Could be a thing.

After the war.

(Which war? Do they ever really end, Aziraphale?)

V.

Backlit in neon.

Nothing accidental.

They both said it, not because they spoke, but because they couldn’t.

VI.

“Godfathers,” Aziraphale murmured, a gentle smile spreading across his entire face. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

Crowley grinned, yellow eyes flashing. “It’s not so bad when you get used to it.”

The drunken stupor of the last…however long…still hovered softly over the bookshop’s backroom, even though they’d both sobered up. Crowley wanted to reach over and fill up a new glass to start it all again and continue the night, but he also knew that this was his cue for a graceful exit. Before Aziraphale started _hinting._

The angel frowned at him for his comment and gave a delicate sniff. “I won’t have you getting any _ideas_ about my agreeing to this,” he said sternly, though it was somewhat offset by the unruliness of his hair, betraying the many times his nervous fingers had run through it. “Say what you will, but this is a matter of Heavenly import. Strictly business, this working together thing.”

Crowley braced himself on his palms and leaned back from the edge of the sluffed sofa seat. “Right, right. Arrangement stuff. I know how it works.”

Aziraphale glanced at him oddly, then looked to his drink, looking like he also wished he could refill it, but knew that would only invite Crowley to do the same. “I hope you know I-“ He cut himself off.

Crowley tilted his head, sending some of the loose bits of his shoulder-length hair across his cheek and forehead. “Y’what?”

“Nothing.”

“You sure?”

“Quite.”

A raised eyebrow.

“Put your eyebrows away. It’s really nothing.”

“Oh, come on. Out with it, angel.”

Aziraphale gave in and filled a glass, looking as unsure as he did determined. “Angels don’t lie,” he said. Before Crowley could cut in with a joke about _flaming swords ringing a bell, angel,_ he added, “But you – you _do_ know, don’t you?”

Crowley considered his friend across the way. Six thousand years, they’d spent together. Their love for Earth was unparalleled and deeply misunderstood by all but the other. Crowley knew, unequivocally, that there was only one in this entire universe who understood him well enough to – to see. He was never sure how _much_ Aziraphale saw, but he always hoped (and dreaded) that it was enough. His own lack of impulse control had only aided and abetted in that over the centuries.

And what did he see when he looked at Aziraphale? What did he know, for certain, about his friend?

“I do know,” Crowley said, standing and tugging his sunglasses back on. He smiled.

Aziraphale smiled back, more fragile.

They were in this together, weren’t they?

Crowley walked out with some made-up excuse, thrumming with energy and need. He couldn’t let the world end. Not if it meant the end of this, too.

(Between.

There was one no one heard.

There was one more, whispered in waves of the first desert’s heat; in Alexandria’s flames; in the spray of the Flood’s rain; in the roaring, flaking ashes of the screaming condemned as the judges Above looked on and away.

There was one other, knuckles bloody as they scraped the floor for the warped, curling pages of a green-grey remembrance, scratched gold letters.

There was this one, before he stood and left behind the smouldering escape, the home where his heart had lived before.

This one was simple. This one was quiet.

To this one, no one listened.)

VII.

Aziraphale followed Crowley off the bus. One step, then another. A thousand thoughts fought for prominence in his mind, none of them quite managing to catch a thread but he and his friend’s looming end, and the end barely avoided.

He trailed closely after Crowley into the imposing glass building, up the lift, and into his flat, which was just as barren, bold, and bleak as it had been the last time Aziraphale visited. The space made him desperately uncomfortable, and Crowley seemed to prefer the bookshop, so he wasn’t here often. But tonight, it was familiar, and, well. Still _here._ So, it would do.

He and Crowley had exchanged a few words on the bus, but most everything that could have been spoken went unsaid. They had both lost much. And they had saved the world – had helped, anyway – but at the cost of one another.

Aziraphale couldn’t stand it.

Crowley tossed a smirk over his shoulder, though it was fragile. “Welcome to my _humble_ abode, angel. Make yourself – well, as comfortable as you can.” He continued further in, tossing his jacket to the side as he went. For some reason, the idea of being alone frightened Aziraphale, and he hurried from the threshold to follow.

Crowley slumped on one end of his black leather sofa, which could have been substituted for a slab of stone with little aesthetic alteration, and Aziraphale took the silent invitation for what it was and settled on the other end. Perhaps they should’ve gotten a celebratory drink, but the angel, for one, didn’t have it in him to celebrate much of anything.

Aziraphale watched Crowley and Crowley watched the other wall, the silence heavy with everything they weren’t saying.

“You ought to sleep, my dear,” Aziraphale murmured after a few moments. It was true. The demon barely seemed to be keeping himself upright. The many miracles of the day had taken its toll – not to mention whatever Aziraphale missed between. The meeting at the bar had been indicative of…a lot of things Aziraphale could hardly comprehend, then. “You’ll need your energy up for what comes next,” he added.

“Can’t,” Crowley replied on a long sigh. “We need to – to do the prophecy thingy, and Hell will…” His mouth split wide with a yawn, and his face scrunched up as though offended by the involuntary reaction.

“A nap, then,” Aziraphale insisted gently.

Crowley blinked and swallowed dryly. Lifting off his sunglasses and scrubbing his face with his fingers, he gave a weak nod. “Yeah, alright. A short one, I guess.” He stood, not so gracefully as usual, but with a small stumble. “Wake me in, like, an hour? Don’t think any alarm would cut it right now…”

Aziraphale smiled as softly as he knew how, fondness breaking his heart in two. “Of course, my love. I’ll…keep watch and…see if I can’t find us a solution.”

Crowley blinked at him blearily, opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. “Right,” he squeaked. Without another word, he turned on his heel and dragged his uncooperative limbs to his bedroom. Aziraphale had half a thought to follow, to tuck him in and fuss, but couldn’t work up the courage to actually do it. Besides, it was hardly a new impulse. He was more than used to resisting the urge to fuss over this foolhardy creature of his.

He sat back, subconsciously making the sofa much softer in his ardent desire for comfort and familiarity. He could see through the hall that Crowley had left his bedroom door open, and within minutes, soft, snake-y snores emanated through the darkness. The growling, hissing cadence of it might’ve frightened a human child, but caused Aziraphale only to give an affectionate huff and close his eyes.

_Of course, my love._

Upon replaying those words, Aziraphale stiffened.

Well.

He had not, by any measure, meant to say that. A slip of the tongue was all. Yet, no panic arose at the realization, only an ancient, yearning heartache. It was as though even his _soul_ was weary of the denial and the falsified scandal, for he merely relaxed again and smiled at the memory of the shocked expression on the poor demon’s face. As though he hadn’t had enough to deal with today.

It had been such a terribly _long_ day…

A terribly long six thousand years.

But it hadn’t been all bad. Not at all. Aziraphale thought of centuries of love, centuries of friendship, centuries of life and the moments shared between the madness that made it worth living. It was Crowley, but it was also the Earth, and it was the humans and everything God had made here. Everything the humans had made of it, since those shaky beginnings on uneven sands. How precious life was, and the intrinsic value of each one. How could Heaven fail to see?

He couldn’t say he didn’t have regrets, but somehow, even the saddest memories were sweet for a blink. Even the harsh parts of the world were offset by human nature’s need to love. The love for friends and family, for pets and small things, the love for the innocuous and ordinary and absurd. The love for sharing one’s life with those who understand.

Aziraphale had never learned to love in pieces.

He steeled himself and pulled out the little folded prophecy. Indeed, if he had any say in it, he and Crowley would have no need for desperate, last minute confessions. Aziraphale would not despair, for he still had faith in too many things to name.

They would still have lifetimes, after the war and after the war’s end, to say what needed to be said.

+I.

“To the world.”

Aziraphale’s voice was dripping with fondness as he lifted his champagne. “To the _world.”_

Their glasses gave a satisfying _clink,_ and Crowley adjusted himself to better face the angel as Aziraphale immediately fell into a detailed relay of everything he looked forward to, now that the world was not ending, and they would be here to see it. There was something at the Globe next weekend that he’d been most miffed about missing on account of boiling seas and raining fish. He had planned tea with a neighbour for her 79th birthday in a month and was now quite excited about it, since she’d be alive to witness it. There were myriad other things Crowley had already heard about but had no qualms with hearing again. There were worse things than a happy, contented angel.

_Like no angel at all._

He swallowed and lifted the champagne to his chapped lips. Yes. There were much, much worse things.

Aziraphale talked all through their meal, and Crowley was supremely grateful that so little was asked of him, intellectually, as an hour-long kip after the events of the week had not been at all sufficient, and he could feel exhaustion gripping at his clothes like sticky, dank tar. So, he just sipped his glass of champagne, and a second, and smiled fondly at the angel across the table, allowing the soothing sounds of his endless rambling to wash over him.

At some point, eyelids half drooping behind the shades, he noticed Aziraphale was no longer talking and instead was watching him back with a private little smile. Crowley started and lifted the glass to his lips, only to find it empty.

“We should get you home, methinks,” Aziraphale said. “You look like you’re about to fall over.”

Crowley made a protesting noise in his throat but didn’t argue when Aziraphale snapped to bring a waiter over and swiftly paid the bill – leaving an enormously unnecessary tip, of course. The angel stood, adjusted his clothing with his usual fussy air, and used a gentle hand against Crowley’s elbow to guide him into standing and out of the restaurant. Horrifyingly, Crowley simply let it happen.

He could’ve sworn the Ritz was more than a thirty second walk from his flat, but he nonetheless found himself steered inside a handful of metres later. Crowley blinked around at the brightly lit lobby and suddenly stopped dead centre.

Aziraphale looked at him, slightly bewildered. “Is something the matter, Crowley?”

He grunted. “Though you said we were going home.”

“…We are?”

Crowley shook his head, emotions warring inside him. He wished the angel could just tell what he was getting at without him having to say it. The truth was that he didn’t want to be alone, right then, after everything. But that was a vulnerability he couldn’t bring himself to admit to aloud, just like so much else. And besides, his flat had never been home. What was a home, anyway? A place where he felt safe? Where he belonged?

He lifted his sunglasses and looked Aziraphale directly, wearily, in the eye. “Can I stay at your place for the night? Consider it a trade or whatever.”

Aziraphale considered him, unreadable, then nodded sharply. “That is fair,” he replied mildly, and turned. He looped his arm through Crowley’s properly, and they made the (significantly shorter than it should have been) walk to the bookshop.

Crowley gazed around at the world as they went. At the cars and buildings and birds and clouds, the traffic and angry Londoners. The smell of cherries wafting from a bakery, the petrol mixing with something spicy down the block. Honking horns and conversations, humans talking and talking and talking like they’d never grow tired of each other. So many silly, wonderful things that could have been lost surrounded him. He’d spent eleven years dreading, fearing, planning for the expiration date. He’d spent eleven years, looking at the trees and children and counting down the days that remained for them. Every time he looked at the sky, he calculated how much longer it would be blue.

Now, he looked up, the stretch aching in the back of his neck, and instead marvelled at just how blue a sky could be.

At the doorstep of the bookshop, Aziraphale let go of Crowley to fish for the large, antique key he kept in his inner coat pocket. The angel could’ve snapped and opened the doors, but he had always liked doing things the human way. As did Crowley.

“Angel,” Crowley said, pulling Aziraphale’s eyes to his. They both paused for a long moment of eye contact.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale replied. “Is something the matter?”

“No.” He smiled. “I just love you, is all.”

“Oh.” The word seemed to escape Aziraphale involuntarily. His eyes searched Crowley’s face, and he reached a hesitant hand for the sunglasses. In silent permission, Crowley lowered his head and the angel eased them off. Eyes uncovered, the daylight gently waning and the chatter of humans washing over and past them, Aziraphale smiled.

“What a wonderful thing,” Aziraphale said, leaving a hand ghosting over Crowley’s cheek. “To hear it.”

Crowley grinned impishly. “Nice to say it, too. Should give it a try sometime.”

Aziraphale’s eyes twinkled. “I love you, foul fiend.”

Crowley rolled his eyes and gave a dramatic groan, grin plastered on his face like a permanent fixture. “You just _had_ to, didn’t you? You really are a bastard, you know that?”

Aziraphale giggled and pushed open the door, hand sliding down to Crowley’s shoulder and tugging him forward. It was as though, now that he’d started touching Crowley, he was never going to stop. “I think you’re just a sleep-deprived snake. Come in, get some tea in you, and lay down for a bit.”

Crowley, eagerly trapped in the angel’s orbit, stepped inside and closed the door. There was no smell of smoke. There was no barrier of distrust, of shame. Just a warm hand on his shoulder, and the promise of safety wherever they two roamed on this dusty planet.

The promise of a future where they would love aloud.

+II.

Days or weeks or months or years later, there was a sofa with two familiar residents.

Apropos of nothing, Aziraphale looked up from his book to the demon cuddled warm against his side. Crowley’s device had been making myriad beeping sounds that, by now, Aziraphale had learned to tune out. He grinned fondly as Crowley muttered a curse under his breath, a sad jingle playing from his electronic game.

“I love you, my dear,” Aziraphale said softly.

Crowley froze for the briefest moment before relaxing and returning Aziraphale’s smile. “Silly angel,” he said with a roll of the eyes, canines bared in a grin. He snuggled closer, drawing an arm around Aziraphale’s waist as the demon’s cheek fell to his shoulder. “Love you too,” he whispered then, quiet and safe and known. Because finally, _finally,_ he could.

**Author's Note:**

> Added an extra secret bonus confession, out of the goodness of my heart and the sappiness of my trees. <3


End file.
